Category Archives: Meme

I won’t deny, I quite like to be meme-tagged. It’s a validation of my internet existence, and some small evidence that people are reading my blog (although the comments are a good way of doing that too, if you feel so inclined). Tom tagged me for this, and then Chris tagged me for it again, but I’m still only going to do seven songs so you can feel relieved. I won’t inflict my taste in music at you for too long. I’m also not going to write bags about each one as, honestly, I don’t want to. But thanks to the beauty of embedded video, you’ll get to listen to some of them if you feel so inclined. And then you can judge me, you bastards.

For those who don’t know what this is about:

“List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.“

My friend Ben’s band. Seven types of awesome. Been listening to Urusen’s new album pretty much on repeat since it came out last year. Can’t believe they haven’t been signed. Not only have I seen them live more often than any other band, I’ve also jammed with Ben a number of times, which was an awesome feeling, given how moving I find the music. Myspace here if you want more.

Sunsets – Powderfinger

This one is Tony’s fault. He introduced me to this Australian band in a move no-doubt designed to persuade me of his Nation’s superiority over everything else. Unfortunately, I love them and this song is not only wonderful but has a fantastic anime supporting video.

Waterloo Sunset – ??

Arvind has a band whose name I forget cover this song for the French Film soundtrack / closing credit, and, wonderful as the Kinks original is, the cover is something magical. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for well executed acoustic rock.

Falling Slowly – Once

This one is Arvind’s fault too. Deeply romantic, melodic, soulful in a way that I appreciate.

Newton Faulkner: Tear drop

I know, I know, Massive Attack fans will probably lynch me. But I do think the cover is impressive, and love the guitar as a drum thing he does. This one is Ashvina and Sheila’s fault.

Out of our head – Sheryl Crow

I’ve loved Sheryl Crow since I was 14, despite the fact that I loathe most things that have any connection with country music. Love the cadence of this one.

Now and Forever – LoTR Musical

This is principally a recency thing. Saw this musical a few weeks ago and can’t get the song out of my head. Not sure why they’re chuckling so much in this clip.

…and that’s it. Not being one for doing exactly what I’m told, I’m not going to tag seven people. I will tag a few, though: Arvind, if only because he’s managed to get two songs in my current seven, and because he’ll probably give me more music I want to listen to. Noel, because I want to know what the man who got me into Metallica is listening to. Richard, because it’s something fun to do whilst waiting for your passport, and Craig if he gets a second on his travels. Tim, because he’ll probably have fun with it and Jack, because, well, you have to Ask Jack. And Chris, who strikes me as a chap who will have a decent soundtrack.

Well, when I stole, I mean borrowed, when I say night, I mean afternoon, when I say DJ I mean colleague, and when I say life, I mean ability to interact with my digital world; by which I mean laptop. Without my customisations, configurations etc, I was without:

And so on. Although it is probably possible to reconfigure the way Windows logs us on so all this stuff is stored on the server, this would almost certainly drive our server requirements up quite significantly and potentially be quite inconvenient for remote use. Not sure.

But the point I wanted to make (I’m a fan of the thin client world) was that if I could just log on to Firefox remotely when I fired it up, half my customisations would be in place, which would be great. Although I appreciate it’s a massive security risk. And if I could save my Windows preferences somewhere and temporarily apply them to a system that I have to use on occasion, that would also rock. Although, again, probably a security risk.

All the good things are security risks. The world would be better without malicious hackers, criminal masterminds and Noel Edmonds (I’m just kidding, I used to love his show).

What are the top 5 things you miss when you have to use someone else’s PC? Chris? Tom?

I thought I’d avoided the ‘5 favourite social media’ meme, but Danny kindly tagged me, so I’ll give it ago. The reason for avoidance? Erm, I’m not sure there’s anything particularly clever or interesting about my favourite five (I don’t rip, script, furl OR curl anything at all)… but here we go.

I love WordPress. Unsurprisingly. It powers this blog, and allows integration with all sorts of other cool things – including del.icio.us, Flickr, Last.fm, Amazon and more, thanks to some cool plugins.

I love Wikipedia. I’m one of those people who likes to know a little about a lot of things, most of the time, and occasionally a lot about a few, and the articles on Wikipedia invariably provide a useful starting point.

I love RSS. I love my RSS readers slightly less: Feedreader is good and is my desktop client of choice. What I really want is something that syncs with an online service so that threads I’ve marked as read on one are marked as read on the other, and so that I don’t have to subscribe to the same feed more than once. Does Newsgator do this? I’ll look into it at some point. Oh, my online RSS reader of choice is Bloglines, and I do like the way that public blogrolls can be shared on there. I should get into all this OPML stuff too…

I like del.icio.us a lot — currently more for my own edification than its social nature (I only have two people in my network) — but as someone who’s (1) never bothered to use bookmarks and (2) who likes to blog one-liners, it gives me good scope to find links I want to again and be pithy about amusing websites. The linklog on the right, btw, is powered by del.icio.us.

And for number 5? I guess Skype might win that one; admittedly it’s a long way from perfect, and arguable to what extent it constitutes ‘media’ as its output isn’t necessarily public… but its a great bit of social software, and there’s potential there (I read some good tips on Simon’s blog on how to record Skype conversations – something which may come in handy…!).

So there you have it. Tags? Don’t think Chris, Tom, Gareth, Ben or, erm, Neil Gaiman have done this (why not ask?). Share and enjoy, folks, share and enjoy.

Sorry for being slightly blog-happy today but Tompoints to Sternest Meanings – an anagram chat engine. It’s not a Turing engine (which I thought it was to begin with and very rapidly worked out otherwise) – but is good for a laugh. Apart from anything else, you can type things in like:

I’m Armand David.

And have it say:

Rid avid madman.

Which I think is quite insightful, really.

‘Sternest meanings’, of course, is an anagram of gem transientness. Obviously, I mean d’uh!

I need to be saving for a house, really, but there’s a few goodies I want and being the materialo-centric person I am I feel like I really should satisfy this craving. Here’s the list, and some pros and cons. Help me out.

PSP

Probably the device I want least. But it is *damn* cool, and I hear there’s a way you can read comics on it. Which is exciting to me. So, pros…

It’s sexy looking
It reads comics

And cons…?

The only game I want to play on it is Lemmings… oh, and maybe Worms
It costs too much money
I don’t really have the time for it

I barely play on my current Xbox
Can’t think of any game other than Oblivion I’m hungry for
GTA4 and Halo3 aren’t out for a long while
The price will go down when the PS3 launches, just to spite them
My TV’s not HD-compatible
The time thing
It’s also too expensive
I have more productive things I should be doing with my life

That last one probably applies to quite a few of the things I’m talking about.

Batter up, Pocket PC

It’s possible these have been branded ‘Windows Mobile PDAs’ now…

Pros

Gil’s lent me his and it’s really cool
I have bought a Bluetooth keyboard which will let me use it for writing my novel (if I can ever get it started…)
They let me log on to free Wifi everywhere…
I’ll look like someone on Star Trek tapping on one
I get to fly the flag for Windows Mobile, which I really do like

Cons

It really is expensive – £250-£300 ish for a decent one
I’ll look like someone off Star trek tapping on one
Do I *really* need one?

Ooh. This one is winning so far. What’s next?

New PC

Ok, I’m not even going to argue the case for this one. Can’t afford it, or at least one that would be significantly better than this beast. But Oblivion will not run on my PC and the demo of HOMM V was just rubbish. I can’t face swapping out the graphics card, either, it just seems purposeless.

What else could I possibly want, being the greedy greedy man I am?

Well, a ukelele. And a banjo. And a 12-string guitar. But given that I have barely strummed a tune on my other instruments of late… hard to justify.

So I probably shouldn’t buy any of these things. I might keep playing with Gil’s PocketPC until I really have to give it back and then think about buying one, if I can get the keyboard set up. I’ll let you know how it goes…

I wonder if this material craving is worth a meme? I’ll tag some people and see if they play: Tom, Chris, Ben, Simon B (come on, you know you want to ;) – list four things you want and talk yourself into/out of buying them).

My sofa is large, white, luxuriously squidgy and slightly agéd. It is a thing of wonder, and I suspect contains some kind of trans-dimensional vortex. It is magnificient. Like a man once loved a lamp, I love my sofa.